Re: (rshsdepot) Lower Manhattan Depots [was B&O Railroad Museum]

["James R. Guthrie" <jguthrie_@_pipeline.com>]

rshsdepot
Steve asks:
>
>     I'm particularly interested in "real railroad" operation on the
'way
> downtown parts of the NY & Northern; I know that they built down to
City
> Hall and Astor House at Broadway-Vesey St - Park Row, that this was
largely
> a horsecar operation, including through passenger cars for "steam"
trains;
> and I have references to horses pulling boxcars down the Bowery in
the
> 1880's; but I don't really have a coherent picture of all these
operations.
> Do you have one, or know where to look?

The NY&Northern became the Putnam Division which apparently did not
operate south of 155th street in ordinary service; you're thinking of
the New York and Harlem.

Probably the easiest place to start is "The Coming of the New York and
Harlem" by Louis V. Grogan. Also see Condit's "Railroads of the Port
of New York."

Manhattan once had lots of Railroad stations and terminals aside from
the three that survive in one form or another. There were NY*H and
NY&NH stations down to City Hall (made redundant by the Third Avenue
El when the latter built its branch to GCT), St. John's Park, 30th
Street (technically still in use in passenger service in the 1960s),
and 155th Street. Of course, there were way stations along both the
West Side and NY&H as well.

I have some maps which show the NY&H running all the way down; note
that the legacy of this -- namely the street railway tracks in the
Park Avenue Tunnel South of GCT that is now a highway (albeit with a
station in the tunnel about 40th Street) can be seen. It is also
ironic that the original Madison Square Garden was built on the site
of the NY&New Haven station at Madison Square, thus the current one is
not the first to supplant a railroad station (though I've never read
of folk lamenting the loss of the first one, save in one of the
sarcastic obits regarding Stanford White -- but that's another thread
on another list <g>).

Cheers,
Jim

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